In Between The Lines
by Steffx621
Summary: O/S She never had the courage to come back home and claim what was hers for eternal right. Life then simply kept going for the two of them. Was it what they wanted? No. Was it what they dreamed once? No. Yet, that was the life they were doomed to live. LP


**Summary ****: **She never had the courage to come back home and claim what was hers for eternal right. Life then simply kept going for the two of them. Was it what they wanted? No. Was it what they dreamed once? No. Yet, that was the life they were doomed to live. LP

**Author's Note : **Another one-shot! One a whole lot shorter than the last one, and one I'm _honestly_ not sure where the heck it came from! lol... Apparently I was in need to write something _not_ too...fluff-ish?_?_? I honestly dunno, I just know that a few nights ago I just couldn't sleep *Far too many things going through my mind atm lol* and then I just opened my laptop, a brand new Word document, and then just started writing with "In Between the Lines" by Tyrone Wells in repeat. Listened to that song the other day in a video in YouTube and simply love it ever since! :)

Any way I'm not too sure what you are going to think of this. I'm not sure _how_ or _why_ it happened, I just know _it did_, and... Dunno! I just hope you like it :)

The summary says it all mainly...Peyton went to LA after high school but never came back home with Brooke, and well...then the chance to make wrongs right just never happened.

**Enjoy!** *And let me know what you think!*

**In Between The Lines**

* * *

It wasn't a bad life. It wasn't bad at all. She had a good job; she had the same nice apartment she had live in for as long as she could remember now. She had people around her; not a whole lot, but just what she considered enough.

Thinking back when she was younger, she'd remember all the times she sat thinking in just _how_ her life was going to be once she _'grew up'_.

Now her mind liked to go back there...remember all those dark cloudy afternoons when the so-called _future_ would not only fill her own thoughts, but also the ones of the people that had been surrounding her at the time.

At that very moment in her life, the future wasn't what filled her thoughts any longer, now, more often than not, it was the _past_. Everything that had once happened, and everything that had made her reach the point of her life she'd reached that very day.

It hadn't been easy getting there. She'd had to struggle and fight against everything and even against herself in order to find that _'truth'_ she had always been seeking out for, and that at some point, she hadn't even know she was.

Yet, that had always been her reality. She had always needed to find that truth that would make _her_ true. True to the world, and true to herself. And she had found it. Eventually, and after stumbling and falling more times than just one.

But in any way, she had never let the world beat her. Not after she'd found out it really couldn't. It took her long enough, but one morning she simply woke up knowing she'd survive no matter what. By the age of twenty-six, she had survived all the crap life had thrown at her thus far, and even so, despite the troubles and ache, her eyes kept opening, she kept breathing, and walking, and talking, and living in spite of everything.

That morning she somehow came to realize that those two words she had once dreaded so much weren't as scary as they seemed.

Moving on.

It never meant it would be easy only because she'd realized she could do it, but she'd dealt with that too.

She had dealt with pain, and regrets for a very long time. She'd carried with them for the longest of times, however...the day she decided she wouldn't anymore, she had feel lighter.

Freer.

Freer of _him_ even though the better part of her had never really wanted to be free of him precisely.

Still, now, after all those years, in rainy afternoons as the one she was seeing through her window that evening, the thoughts of her past weren't bitter, or full of ache anymore. She'd think back of home and thoughts of once friends, and long gone laughter would fill her mind in only mere seconds, and despite herself most of the times, a smile would _always_ tug on the corners of her lips.

She had been happy once. She had. She'd once had everything she'd ever wanted and she'd simply been _happy_. She had loved, she had laughed, she had fought, and she had yelled…She had been angry, she had been thrilled, she had been desperate, but she'd also been hopeful.

She had lived.

That was maybe the thought that helped her get through each day; she'd lived. She'd lived a life that was never easy. It was still not easy. There were always every day struggles she'd assume every other human being went through every once in a while, if not every so often just like she did.

But then, in the back of her mind, the voice that once whispered remorse feelings into her ear had long been quieted. Now what it was left of it was more like a murmur...A soft, gentle, breeze of air that every now and again told her how she should be proud of everything she had done.

Even of the things that didn't work out, because sometimes the outcome was not what _really _mattered, but the road she took to get there. Everything she had experienced, and saw, and went through before getting to wherever she'd got.

Sometimes it had been failure; some others it had been success, but ultimately, she'd learned how that had never been the point.

That hadn't been the point at all.

The point was all that she had felt while getting there.

While _living_.

The real point were all the smiles she'd once smiled, and all the tears she'd cried.

The point was not the hole in her heart; the point was everything that very same heart had once felt.

The point was all the many times it had swollen and race at the touch of someone, at _his _touch, at _his_ words, or at the way he had smiled at her, or at the way his lips and skin felt in hers...

It was in the way some nights, in one of those cold lonely nights in the dark of her room, when she simply knew it was already too late to even bother to caught a glimpse of the clock, because chances were she was probably dreaming anyway, that she simply settled in silence with her eyes tightly closed. But it was there, in those tangled seconds in which reality and fantasy mixed when she could almost..._almost_ feel his hot breath itching behind her ear, the touch of his hands over her body as he kissed her neck, or her cheek, or any part of her body really. And then, also maybe, if she only tried hard enough she could even hear his soft voice whispering sweet little nothings into her ear.

And the feeling hadn't been bitter for a very long time already. She had instead learned how to capture that feeling of those seconds, of those nights, and try with all her might to lock them deeply into her heart because she knew those nights wouldn't come so often and forgetting was simply not an option for her anymore.

She'd moved on.

She had. She wasn't bitter about her past anymore. But she still couldn't forget.

She would never do that.

She had settled to her life; yes, she had. She had settled herself to live a life in which there was no Lucas Scott saving her and reminding her just how very much her art mattered. He'd left her, and she'd been broken.

Just like a broken record torn into little pieces in the back of a room where no one cared anymore for it. She knew there wasn't really a point in fixing a broken record, she knew that _very_ well; she could try all she wanted, but even if she succeeded after a lot of work; it still would _never_ sound the same way it sounded once.

That had happened to her. Or at least that had been the way she'd saw it. The feelings were still there, just like the music was still there somewhere in the torn apart record. Her feelings had always remained intact in her heart, and in her mind, just wanting anxiously to simply be let out in the open. To be yelled at the world if only for the quiet satisfaction to feel alive, and not forgotten.

But the moment she awoke that morning, and he hadn't been there anymore, her song had somehow broken for good, and even though she had tried to fix it and make it sound again, she never succeeded.

She could never find just a glue strong enough to keep the broken pieces together and make the world hear her the way only _him_ had hear her once upon a time.

Dreams of _'What could have been'_ haunted her nights sometimes too. She'd think in just how different her life would have turn out to be if they had only have that _one_ more chance to get it right.

She would sometimes imagine their life together, the one they supposedly were meant to have and had dreamed together about once upon a time too.

The _two_ of them; just them and the universe. Underneath the clear blue sky, tangled in each other's arms, in complete silence and with only the sound of both their breathings filling the air.

She could remember all and _every_ single time she spent her days there; in his arms... with only the beating of his heart echoing throughout her whole body, healing her until her deepest depths.

Although she would never admit that to anybody other than herself anymore, in those moments of still silence between just the two of them, her mind would sometimes go to some place else; one in which she was _his_...not just for that moment, but for a _lifetime_.

Back then she'd thought in what would be like to be married to that boy whose arms were wrapped tightly around her body; she would think in how would be like to walk down one of those clichéd white roses filled aisles with him at the end standing tall next to a preacher in the neatest of tuxedos. She would imagine herself saying _'I do'_, because the truth was that she couldn't possibly imagine herself replying a single other thing.

She'd seen him saying _'I do'_ as well. With one of those smiles he had always save just for her, and that the world couldn't even imagine such broody boy could offer such warm smiles.

She hadn't seen one of those in over twenty-one years, yet, sometimes, if she closed her eyes tight enough, she'd see him again, right there, smirking and saying one of those wily comments he more than often would say. She would even find herself smiling at him as if he was actually before her eyes.

Those were moments, that, for more reasons than one, she'd cherish whenever they happened.

She believed now however, that whenever those moments came, maybe..._just_ maybe, a hint of sadness would come along with them from now on.

Every time Lucas Scott had come across her mind in the past, she'd liked to picture him in some place being great.

Being whatever version of himself he'd chose to be, but being great anyway.

She'd imagined him being happy in spite of herself. Of course there were always the times when she saw his face, and she couldn't help but wish a huge truck would pass over his smiley face, but a thought like that one hadn't cross her mind in a very, _very_ long time already.

There is one old, really clichéd line, that would come to her mind at times… the one that people kept saying about how you can't forget your first love.

Lucas had been hers.

Of course he had. There had never been even the slightest of doubts about that. In more than one way, he had taught her how to feel, he had taught her just how she could actually open her heart to someone, and felt more than she ever ambitioned to feel at doing so.

He had taught her once how loving a person could be painful, could hurt more than breathing itself sometimes, but it could also make a person whole in the most amazing of ways.

Maybe she should have fought harder, maybe she shouldn't have let go of him so easily, or maybe she should have just say _'yes'_ the moment he proposed all so many years ago.

Maybe _he_ should have fought harder for her as well; maybe he should have stay and just explain her one more time how they were destined to be together, and as long as she knew that nothing else would ever matter or come in the way of that knowledge.

Maybe he had forgotten it too. Maybe that evening at that hotel room he had also forgotten just how big his feelings for Peyton Sawyer were. Maybe he had also forgotten that night how you could _never_ fall out of love when you are in love with just that person the universe, or God, or fate had planned out for you from the start.

Maybe he had forgotten how staying wasn't the right choice for her only, but for him as well.

She was sure that not a day had passed by when she hadn't needed him. Perhaps, most part of the times she'd needed him to just hold her; she'd needed his body to rest her own over. She'd needed his arms around her, and those kisses on the top of her head, which wordlessly would always tell her that things were going to be okay one way or the other if she only stayed long enough into his embrace.

However, sometimes, she had also needed him for the polar opposite; she'd been at a party...one of those parties filled with shallow friends, and little fake smiles every too often, but that in any case, a good thing would happen, a fun comment could have been thrown and she had literally ached to have him by her side at that moment, because she simply knew he'd find that funny too.

Maybe sometimes he had thought about her that way too...Maybe sometimes he'd saw a black old Comet in the streets, and imagined her tangled mess of curls blowing because of the air, and...

Maybe he had smiled.

She liked to hope he had anyway.

Maybe it was naïve, maybe it was sad...maybe it was only a fantasy, but she wasn't harming anyone at doing so.

In the end, it was always just her. No one else, for the longest of times it had always been she and her silence.

She'd grown to like it…eventually. And even appreciate it after her crazy loud days at that same label that took long enough to be aware of just how valuable she really was.

That was also one of the things that made her smile sometimes...Knowing she'd believed in herself, and at doing so, she had made the others believe in her, and in everything she could do as well.

_He _will always be in the back of her mind anyway. He would never go away for good...not even now.

She would always keep trying to hear the fast beating of his heart the way she'd listened to it when her head rested upon his chest as she'd done it so many times in the past.

Even if it hurt, even if sometimes her eyes filled with tears without she really knowing, she would still try to remember that closeness the two of them once shared, and that brought her such peace once upon a time.

With a lump on her throat, and letting out a long sigh, she stood up from her spot by the window at last. A part of her hated today was raining, yet...in more than one way, the weather couldn't fit the day any better.

She smoothed down the dress the best friend she hadn't spoken to in what felt forever had helped her choose for today.

Her tiny apartment was now filled with people as it hadn't been in years. She could hear mostly murmurs from the living room. Of course, she was wondering what they were talking about, but only one name came to her mind when she thought about it.

_Lucas_

It was never supposed to be like this. Sometimes she would also think about them all. In what their lives had turned out to be…Were they still together? Have their dreams come true or instead shattered into little pieces like some of hers had? Have they grown out of love?

Were they _happy?_

She had wondered many times just what would be like to go back _home_…go back to that place she had grow up at, and that held so many memories of her, and everything she had go through underneath the surface of familiar paths and lakes landscapes that once gave her life just a little more meaning.

She had wondered if she could actually find that again...go back and somehow save that meaning her life had once had, but hadn't in such long time.

She had never had the courage though.

She'd seen the signs that had reminded her of home at some points, she had seen the plane tickets prizes, she had seen just how many miles she'd have to drive if she only chose to drive instead of flying…

She had even let his face run through her mind as though giving her just the nerve she needed to do what she wanted _–what maybe was right–_ but she'd always chose to look away instead, and go back to the life she'd gotten herself used to live.

Now it all seemed a little more grayer.

She hadn't exactly pictured how it would be like to see them all again…to see Nathan, and Haley, and the many almost seven children she always thought they would have. She hadn't exactly imagined what she would tell to Brooke once she saw her again, and the once brunette she had yelled at for dyeing her Barbie's hair, had now become the successful woman they have once also imagined she would be.

She had never imagined this precise scenery though. Truth be told, she had never, not once, imagined she'd live the very day she was living at the moment.

She looked up at the doorway when she heard a soft _'Ready?'_ echoing through her door.

In all honestly, the answer was _'No'_. Of course, she wasn't ready.

Yet, she managed a small nod of her head, and even a tiny smile.

It should feel awkward…after all those years of not speaking one word, talking to each other, and even just seeing into each other's eyes shouldn't feel familiar, but instead it should feel the total opposite.

It still didn't. She maybe hadn't seen Brooke in years, but…she was still her best friend anyway.

Everybody looked up at her with a small smile as she stepped into the living room. She wasn't sure what she was supposed to say_. 'Glad you are all here' 'Let's get this over with' 'Wish you all actually weren't here'_

'_I'm sorry'_

That one could actually get it right, but she chose silence instead, and only smiled back.

"I…"

Peyton had to smile when she trailed off. Brooke had never been a woman of words, yet, more than one time she had said just the right things Peyton had needed to hear at some point, today however, there was really nothing she could say or do to make it all alright again.

"You don't have to say anything," The former blonde said with a small voice, and smiling yet again.

It had happened; she couldn't do anything to fix it anymore, so instead of offering anything else –_tears precisely_– she'd chose tiny smiles in its place.

It made her feel a little warm actually.

"You look nice, and I'm glad you…" It was her time to trail off when the brunette's face fell looking down at the floor.

Maybe it wasn't exactly the time to give compliments, and tell her how in spite of everything, she was actually glad she was seeing her with her own eyes after all that time.

"I am sorry, too, you know?" Peyton spoke softly again, hoping her words would make Brooke meet her eyes.

She did so, and although Peyton had tried not to, she was still softly smiling when their eyes locked.

Brooke waited a moment...a quite long moment actually, pursing a little her lips, and looking over at everything but at Peyton's eyes. She lifted her face one more time shaking it slightly. "Why?" She asked simply, yet her voice was carrying a huge merge of emotions; from sadness and anger, to regret and sorrow.

Peyton looked down at the floor shrugging her shoulders. She didn't know exactly _'Why'_, she only knew that had been the way life turned out to be.

There was no eraser, not rewind button, they couldn't go back and made it right now. Everything that had happened, had happened. There was nothing she could do anymore other than look down uneasily at her feet, and shrug her shoulders.

There was no right answer to Brooke's question anyway...She could say...pride, but...That would surely make Brooke angrier, so Peyton settled yet again with silence, and another tiny smile.

"We should go now," She said looking back up at Brooke's eyes after a moment.

The ride had been deathly quiet; not a real word had been spoken. Haley was at her side actually, Nathan driving, and she and Haley in the back seat.

She was genuinely changed...not in a bad way though. Not at all. Her hair was long, and just by looking into her eyes Peyton could know how her life hadn't been all that easy either, yet...then her eyes would traveled to the front of the car, and she'd simply know how it still had turned to be _exactly_ what she had always expected it'll be.

She simply was with the man she had always love.

Tears forming behind her eyes, and a smile tugging on the corners of her lips was what she felt when thinking in Haley's life.

She shook her head slowly pulling herself out of her thoughts that way, and when she did so, it took her only seconds to realize they'd arrived even though Nathan hadn't stop the car quite yet.

It was still raining, yet a whole lot softer, and it felt now just...cold.

A preacher was talking the whole time, and the four of them stood beside one another with the same dull expression on their faces. There was a lot of people, still, it wasn't half the people that should have been there.

For starters, _he_ shouldn't have been there in the first place. It had felt a little surreal, accidents happened all the time near her home for some reason...it wasn't as if it was an unsafe neighborhood, that wasn't it. It was a pretty decent little neighborhood with pretty decent people. In any case, it never really mattered how decent those people were...bad things would always still happen to them.

Accidental fires, children locked by themselves in empty apartments, car crashes every too often at the very same end of her street...A part of her had actually got used to the riot that would form every once in a while, and one day ago hadn't been any different.

She was walking home, just as she almost _never_ did, but she still did so that day. It was a nice day, it was shining, and it was just a little past three o'clock in the afternoon, kids were just getting out of school so the streets were filled with them. She had smile at the sight, and gotten herself into the little café at the end of the street. She had been looking over at everybody that passed in front of the café with their children, or their friends, or just with someone...it was then when she saw him, and saying she'd almost choke with her coffee was an understatement.

She had stayed put though. Waited still for a moment hoping he hadn't seen her. He had though, and even though the two of them had changed so much over the years...especially her however, messy curls had been long replaced for soft waves, as well, as once blonde hair had been replaced with the darkest shade she had found once upon a time when blonde just didn't fit any longer, they were still the same two people that had shared too much at some point of their lives.

When he saw her from across the street, at first she actually had smiled. It had been so long, yet he was still the first guy she'd ever have feelings for. It hadn't been love precisely, at least not _that_ kind of love, but it still had been _something_.

Her smile had faded the moment he reached her by the table inside the coffee shop. He'd been crying, and she had been able to tell that much.

He had actually asked her what she was doing there...as if she wasn't the one that should have been asking that very question. It was her neighborhood anyway, her city, her life, he was the one that was intruding.

At least that was what she'd thought at first. She'd been wrong. Somewhat at the very least.

He'd made one of those _'Oh'_ faces when she pointed out at the condo across the street as her home.

Nathan had then learned just what Lucas had been doing by himself at that street two days before.

It would have been too late anyway.

Peyton guessed that was the only explanation she could give to herself in order to keep herself from breaking down before all the ones that had know her once.

They could see right through her; she knew that. In any case, she chose to show her toughest side. The very same one she'd perfected with the years there in LA.

It had felt wrong, but the moment the preacher stopped talking, and one by one, everybody that was there walked closer to the coffin letting fall there delicate white roses to the ground, she had actually seen a little curly blonde girl with sparkling blue eyes letting fall her very own rose as well.

It wasn't just Lucas who had died. It was also all the hopes and dreams she didn't even know she still had, but that she still did anyway.

Maybe somewhere deep in the back of her mind she had been still hoping that someday, far or close, they would find each other again, and it would feel as though time hadn't passed at all for the two of them.

Maybe a part of her still believed in destiny and fate... and happy endings, and in the fact that she and Lucas Scott were meant to be together.

They had found each other again, it just...have been too late.

Who knew it was _his_ heart the one that couldn't take the fact of seeing her again?

He'd been a block away from her doorsteps when it had failed. They'd said he was still on his meds, and that he had took it that day...yet his heart simply couldn't take it anymore, and gave in before he could lay his eyes on Peyton as he'd been so determined to do.

She hadn't cried when Nathan told her everything; she simply...hadn't. Not a single tear she'd shed. Not at that moment anyway. That same night, when it was she alone in her room once again, she'd let one, and _one_ tear only fell.

They never said goodbye...maybe _that _was what hurt the most.

After taking a deep breath she walked her way to the hole in the ground where his coffin was being lowered. She stayed by his side for a long moment, she was the last one tossing the very last rose, it really didn't matter if she took a little longer than the rest did. She looked down at the wooden coffin, and a small smile formed on her lips.

Maybe it did mean something they hadn't say goodbye. Maybe they didn't need to, because... if they were meant to each other as she still believed they were, '_Goodbyes_' weren't really necessary, because the day they'll find each again would come, and then...maybe then, nothing else would really matter.

Tossing down at last the little white rose, she let her eyes fell shut, and then, yet again, another single tear fell from her eyes.

"_I'__ll be seeing you, Luke."_

* * *

_._


End file.
